New evidence for existence of "God particle"

Physicists are more certain than ever the "God particle" exists, announcing new Higgs boson findings Thursday that build on previous research that could help define how the universe works.

The question now is whether they've identified the basic Higgs boson or a so-called "super-Higgs. "

The announcement from CERN, the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research, stopped short of any definitive conclusions but essentially it means scientists will stop referring to last summer's discovery as "Higgs-like. "

The basic Higgs boson fills in a missing piece of the standard model in physics, explaining how electrons and all matter have mass. However, there are wilder theories of a super-Higgs that could provide clues to things such as dark matter, and scientists are still investigating that possibility.

"It's quite an interesting question," said Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, part of the CMS team that conducted research at the Large Hadron Collider on the France-Swiss border. "This is one of the sciences where we have a model to explain all of the particles and its actions. "

The elusive Higgs boson particle was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The particle was named for Peter Higgs, one of the physicists who proposed its existence, but it later became popularly known as the "God particle. "

Last July, scientists at CERN announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like, but they stopped short of saying conclusively that it was the same particle or some version of it.

Scientists have now finished going through an entire set of data and announced the results in a statement and at a physics conference in the Italian Alps.

"To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN that each involve about 3,000 scientists.

Its existence helps confirm the theory that objects gain their size and shape when particles interact in an energy field with a key particle, the Higgs boson. The more they attract, the theory goes, the bigger their mass will be.

The super-Higgs would fit in a physics model called supersymmetry, which posits that each boson particle has an unseen, heavier partner.

The answers are likely to come slowly, Spiropulu said. She compared the Higgs findings to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Curiosity rover, which collects bits of geological data that incrementally fits the larger picture of Mars exploration.

"It's a little bit of shining light, step by step as we turn around and accumulate the data the more we understand," she said,

The Large Hadron Collider, a $10-billion atom-smasher that operates in underground tunnels, was shut down last month for two years of upgrades, so CERN won't begin collecting new data until 2015. But scientists collected enough "parked data" that they will continue conducting research and making findings, Spiropulu said.